Dell MD3260 RAID policy for DPM 2012 Storage Pool

I am in the process of configuring a Dell MD3260 Storage Array for a DPM 2012 storage pool and I am not sure what the best RAID configuration is to choose.  The array has a capacity of 90Tb and this needs to be split between 2 DPM servers that will need to backup to their own separate LUNs.

If anyone has any advice on either of the 2 following questions it would be much appreciated:

1. Which RAID configuration I should choose?

2. Should I have several small disk groups or one large one to improve performance?

Thanks

Chris

January 27th, 2015 11:32am

Hi Chris,

First I would look into how much capacity you will need when the DPM-servers allocates it storage and make sure you've got some available for the future.

Larger groups will give you more capacity but consider that fact that the more disks a RAID have, the longer time will it take to rebuild when a disk fails.

I see two different approaches for you with the MD3260:

  • Two RAID6, one for each DPM-server.
  • Four RAID5, two for each DPM-server.

Also, don't forget to dedicate one or two disks as global hotspares in case several disk fails at the same time!

Hope this gave you some insight!

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January 27th, 2015 1:31pm

Thanks Markus,

This ties in well with what I have been reading so I have configured 1 x dynamic disk pool (this negates the requirement for a hot spare and also increases the rebuild speeds) and then 2 virtual disks within that pool.  It seems that the configuration for this is similar to a RAID6 configuration as it has 2 disks for parity.

The dynamic disk pool seems to be a new feature in the MD3xxx series of arrays from Dell (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQCYcLWd3Gg)

Thanks again,

Chris

January 27th, 2015 3:05pm

Hi,

I'm using 3260 as well for DPM backup. I'm using One Disk Pool per DPM Server with Raid 6 Storage. Within that Pool I have 10 TB Disks for DPM. I think it is still recommended to only use 10 TB disks, nothing larger for DPM. The Disks are configured as thin provisioned disks (as DPM wasts disk space like crazy) and they are allowed to grow automatically up to 100%. I do not overcommit my storage.

Hope this helps!

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January 27th, 2015 5:18pm

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